Three more test positive for Covid-19, Odisha total rises to 82
BHUBANESWAR: Three more persons, all from Bhadrak district, tested positive for Covid-19, raising the total number of people infected by the virus to 82, the health department updated on its website on Wednesday.
Three more persons recovered, raising the total number of people cured from the viral infection to 30. The state has 51 active cases (one person had died).
The number of positive cases rose to 11 in Bhadrak, designated a hotspot by the Centre. Earlier, five more persons from Balasore had reported positive on Tuesday, raising the district total to eight.
Government authorities said more than 2,000 workers from Odisha who were stuck in West Bengal, managed to sneak into the area recently and could be the reason behind the spike in positive cases. The police have intensified vigil along the Odisha-West Bengal border to stop the influx of migrants.
Besides Balasore, Bhadrak and Jajpur too are giving the government headache with the two districts reporting five cases each on Monday. Number of cases in Jajpur has gone up to seven. In Jajpur, two doctors and 19 staff of the district headquarters hospital have been placed in quarantine after it was found that a man who tested positive on Monday was admitted there earlier.
On Tuesday, DGP Abhay and revenue divisional commissioner (central division) Anil Samal visited Balasore to review the situation. “The 10 who have tested positive in Bhadrak and Jajpur had recently returned from Kolkata. Contact-tracing of those who tested positive in Balasore is still on,” Samal said.
Government sources said around 2,800 people have returned from West Bengal in the past one month.“Those who returned in the past 14 days have been kept in temporary health centres in various panchayats,”Samal said.
The health department has formed three rapid response teams, led by three directors (director health, director public health and director family welfare) to supervise the containment work in Balasore, Bhadrak and Jajpur.
Door-to-door survey is being conducted in the containment zones to check possible fever and influenza-like illness and severe acquired respiratory infections (SARI). While Balasore has one containment zone, Bhadrak has five and Jajpur two.
A government statement said 29 of the 79 Covid-19 patients have recovered in the state. As many as 147 are in hospital isolation.
Meanwhile, a 70-year-old man from West Midnapur district of West Bengal, who had tested positive for Covid-19 on April 9, died in Bhubaneswar on Tuesday. Government spokesperson Subroto Bagchi said the man’s death would not be linked to Covid-19 as he had turned negative. “He died of other complications. He had developed cancer,” Bagchi said.
The information and public relations department tweeted that the man passed away due to hypopituitarism with septic shock and multi-organ failure.
So far, the state has witnessed one Covid-19 death, that of a 72-year-old man from Bhubaneswar, on April 7.
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